


Ink

by cygnes



Category: Baby Driver (2017)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 06:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11435442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnes/pseuds/cygnes
Summary: Baby notices one of Darling's tattoos and consequently gets to know both Darling and Buddy a little bit better.





	Ink

**Author's Note:**

> Posted [here](http://manzanas-amargas.tumblr.com/post/162695160955/baby-looks-across-the-table-at-darling-and-taps) on my tumblr last night. [scioscribe](http://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe) encouraged me to post it to AO3. I endeavor, as always, to oblige my friends and neighbors. Narratively, every conversation past the first one is impossible (given that they don't meet Debora until the final, doomed heist is about to happen), but I wanted Darling to be able to talk about her. (The _Twin Peaks_ reference, in turn, was inspired by something [skazka](http://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/pseuds/skazka) said after seeing the movie.)

Baby looks across the table at Darling and taps the side of his neck with two fingers. She slaps the same place on her own neck.

“Did I get it?” she says, looking down at her hand.

Baby shakes his head. Not a bug. “Your tattoo,” he explains.

“Oh,” she says. The ink on her skin says a lot of things but _His_ is the easiest to read.

“I’ve got one, too,” Buddy says. “ _Hers_. But it’s somewhere a little more private. Want to see?” His smiles are always a little too dark to seem like he’s joking. Baby’s eyes slide away from him.

“Leave him alone, Buddy,” Darling says. Less defensive or defending than bored—she’s seen this game too many times to find it compelling.

“I was just trying to be polite,” Buddy says. Nobody sitting around the table believes it. Buddy plays with people like housecats play with crickets. Tear one of the legs off, watch them hop in circles a while. Metaphorically. (Maybe literally, but not while they’re on a job. Not that Baby knows of.)

\---

“I got it before I knew him,” Darling says. She taps the side of her neck with two fingers. It’s been weeks since Baby asked. Different job, different stakes. They are surrounded by echoing concrete. There’s no reason for them to be alone together, but here they are. “The man I got it for is dead, and I was never really his to begin with.”

“Oh,” Baby says. He thinks _did you kill him or did Buddy_ , but that seems like the kind of thought that needs to stay inside his head. Most of his thoughts are like that. Baby sees Buddy before he hears him: footsteps in parking garages are so audible they’re impossible not to tune out, the way his brain works. He watches the sideview mirror.

“I wasn’t a stripper,” Darling says. “For a while I was a waitress, like your girl.”

Buddy knocks on the driver’s side window. Baby rolls it down.

“Hello,” Buddy says. Baby looks at his mouth instead of his eyes to see if that makes a difference, but it doesn’t. Not really. There’s still something cold in the smile, or something that makes him feel cold. “Why wasn’t I invited?”

Darling doesn’t answer him. She keeps talking about Debora. “She’s like the waitress from _Twin Peaks_ , what’s-her-name, the one who dropped out of school and had a bad husband.”

“Shelly,” Baby says.

“You’re not old enough to have seen that show,” Darling says.

“Neither are you,” Buddy says, talking across Baby like he’s not there. Trying the follow the conversation reading lips is like watching a tennis match. Baby keeps having to look back and forth. He feels like he must be missing something. He feels like missing something between these two people in particular could go badly.

“Well, you are,” Darling says. Baby doesn’t have to look back at Buddy to know his strange smile has grown teeth. “I was just telling him how I used to be a waitress.”

“You used to be a hostess at a Michelin-rated restaurant,” Buddy says. “It’s not the same thing.”

“How do you think I got there?”

Baby is turning back to look at Buddy, to see what he’ll say in response, but Buddy doesn’t say anything. He slides a hand around the back of Baby’s neck, cupping his skull. Baby stills. He’s familiar with fight and flight but this response is new. Buddy uses his other hand to tug one of Baby’s earbuds out.

“You’ll give yourself whiplash like that,” he says, as though it matters. As though he hasn’t given himself whiplash more than once—the real kind.

\---

Buddy has his shirt off and no one’s pretending like they aren’t looking. Some asshole brought a knife to a gun fight and it took getting stabbed for anyone to notice.

The fourth man on the crew is a woman this time. Tall, heavy-featured. Doc calls her Rose, maybe because of her auburn hair or because of some inside joke. Rose took out the guy who got to Buddy. Baby thinks that Darling might resent her for it.

“He barely nicked me,” Buddy insists.

“You need stitches,” Rose says. She sounds like she’s from up north somewhere. Boston, maybe, or New York.

“Neosporin and butterfly bandages,” Buddy says. “Come on. It’s not deep.”

“He shouldn’t have gotten that close,” Doc says. “Let’s hope you didn’t leave enough blood to identify you. It’ll be a few days before I can get the place cleaned up.” He’s agitated, which means he’s not really angry. Doc gets friendly and reasonable when he’s really angry.

“If they do identify me, good for them,” Buddy says. “I’ve been legally dead for a decade now.”

“This isn’t _funny_ ,” Doc says.

“It is a little bit funny,” Buddy says. His smile turns into gritted teeth. Darling has her hands on him now, going at the wound with cotton swabs and alcohol.

“Too close for comfort,” she says. It’s not that deep, even Baby can see that. But with the blood wiped away, he can see something else, too. Low on Buddy’s ribs, a couple of inches from the slash, there’s what looks like a pen drawing. A dotted line in the shape of a cartoon heart.

Buddy catches his eye. He’s good at knowing where Baby is looking, even behind the sunglasses. “Told you I had one somewhere private,” he says. “Took her all night.”

“I don’t know and I don’t want to know,” Rose says, crossing her arms and staring hard at Buddy and Darling.

“Your loss,” Darling says. Then, to Buddy: “I should re-do it one of these days.” She passes her thumb over the ink and then trails it upward to the wound and presses in at the edge. Just lightly. Just enough to make him grit his teeth again.


End file.
